COVID-19: Additional Challenges for Dentists ?

Abstract

The current COVID-19 has impacted all life aspects and especially the healthcare sector.  Indeed, healthcare workers have been in the frontline since the epidemic started. Dentists are among the most exposed health care workers since their patient cannot keep the mask when receiving dental care (unlike other medical professions) which makes dentists more at risk of receiving the COVID-19-causing coronavirus directly from the respiratory system of their patients. The financial burden comes as an additional charge. The COVID-19 makes operating dental care more requiring in terms of sterilization, cleaning, social distancing, sanitizing, etc. All this, requirements increase the expanses the dentist has to cover to meet the public health standards as well as the medical board recommendations to make the dental clinics save with a minimum risk of spreading COVID-19. The ethical and legal question that raises form that is whether the dentist are allowed to increase the clinical fees payed by the patients. Moreover, the fact that the current Covid-19 crisis risks to worsen the population health such as regarding the obesity epidemiology [1] which is not only a disease [2] but also a health problem impacting the general conditions; makes the health situation more complex. This challenging situation, comes to add a new elements among divers issues dentists already have to overcome in terms of prescriptions [3, 4], pharmacognosy [5, 6], etc. Such issues are to be solved by more than one part (government, medical board, university teaching-responsibles, etc).